


shiver/shudder/shush

by postfixrevolution



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Angst, Could apply to M!Kamui too but I used female pronouns, Drabble, Gen, Introspection, Loneliness, Third path go, published pre-game release
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 21:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5431118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postfixrevolution/pseuds/postfixrevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No path is without its trials and tribulations: its sacrifices and pain, its chilling storms and moonless nights. </p><p> </p><p>Kamui, a dying fire, and an Invisible Kingdom that she is praying to/is hoping to/still can't see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shiver/shudder/shush

**Author's Note:**

> sweats nervously as I continue writing fanfic for a game I have never played or read spoilers on...
> 
> This fic would be literal tRASH if it were not for my astounding beta, [fledermauss](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fledermauss/pseuds/fledermauss). She has some amazing FE:A pieces, so go check her out!
> 
> .
> 
>  _wish we could turn back time, to the good old days,_  
>  _when our mama sang us to sleep,_  
>  _but now we’re stressed out_  
>  \- 21 Pilots

A glass wall, a crystal cage. A shut window, marred by ugly streaks of dripping, dropping rain. She presses her palms flat against the cool, clear surface, watches as condensation forms an outline around her hands, waits as the icy surface steals and saps all the warmth from her already frigid fingertips.

Kamui can’t sleep; at least, not in this little shack in a small corner of some diminutive country. Her mattress feels like stone and her sheets are like ice, so incongruous to the unshakable burning that hasn’t left her eyes since she’s left home.

Nohr is miles away to the west, painted with stars until the very last breath of night air before sunrise, and Hoshido lies the other way, somewhere just before the promise of a rising sun. She can feel her skin and bones long for Hoshido, for the promise of homeland and summer sun, just like she can feel Nohr pull her in by the heartstrings, playing at old memories and whistling the tunes of fading laughter in sunlight-stained gardens.

The rain is muffled against the roof of the shoddy inn she has taken refuge in, a physical barrier between her and both countries, and Kamui has never felt so alone. She draws her hand away from the glass, experimentally pressing the numb fingertips against her lips, and a shiver rolls down her spine at the touch of them. To her spoiled, royal skin, the dying embers in her measly fireplace are nothing but false comfort, exuding the color of warmth, but none of the reassurance.

It would be a lie for her to say that she isn’t heartbroken, isn’t falling apart from the inside out; every muscle and bone in her body is slowly rotting, decaying without familiar soil to plant themselves in, to entrench and innervate themselves with. Whatever pieces of her heart she has left have either slipped from her shaking fingers on the escape here, slipping on the blood spilled there by their own sharp edges, or buried themselves into the soft flesh of her chest, splitting open festering wounds every time she moves.

There is nothing she wouldn’t give to be back at home - at either of her homes, both of her homes - but with a war poisoning the air between the two countries, such a quixotic wish is impossible. Kamui can chase and grab at the fleeting wisps and whispers of a so-called peace, but they all die out just like fireplace embers, leaving her miserable and cold.

Even her latest attempt to end the war has left a bitter taste in her mouth. She can still taste the tang of blood, the result of trying to yell a goodbye from atop her galloping horse; the words ended up unspoken, never managing to fall past her lips, and the last looks she received were ones of shock, of betrayal and incomprehension. Their likenesses are still emblazoned across her mind's eye, as startlingly vibrant as the scarlet that stains her gloves from where she had palmed blood away from her lips, tears away from her eyes. Just behind her teeth, she can still taste it, foul and metallic, forcing a choked exhalation past cage-like fingers and chapped lips, pushing bile past a tight throat and chattering teeth. Kamui almost throws up where she sits, alone and in the dark, yet nothing falls past  her lips save for the painful shudder of desperate breath after desperate breath.

She draws her knees up to her chest, winds her cold, spindly arms around her trembling form, and tries to focus on the warmth that is supposed-to-be under the paper thin sheets she drowns herself in. They are the brightest thing in this room, a sickly, dusty alabaster illuminated only by the dull glow of the moon past heavy, dirty clouds. Twisting her fingernails into the scratchy fabric, Kamui tells herself that tomorrow will be brighter, that the rain will clear on both the beaten path behind her and the untrekked one before her.

There is peace somewhere past the vitreous barrier of her windows, the relentless, icy sheets of rain - she knows there is, there has to be - and even if she has to stumble blindly through the storm until her eyes blur with sky-fallen tears, until her skin turns so icy that the rain is only an absent prickle against their feelingless surface, she will grasp it between her fumbling fingertips and never let go.

It’s out there; how could it not be? She didn’t give up everything, tear away every one of her heartstrings and ties, to fall away, plummet from her lofty, cloud-tall castletop and die like a princess forgotten. Kamui stares out her window once more, at the unchanging darkness and the unyielding rain, and closes her eyes, tries to imagine sunrise.

When Kamui opens her crimson eyes, the rain still pounds against the drowning earth outside, swallowing everything in cold and grey. With a heavy sigh, she frees an arm from her cold sheets, presses a palm against the crystal cage that closes her in. It’s freezing, icier than Nohrian winters, instilling cold and an all-consuming plea for sun into her bones; than sharpened steel against her skin, trickling fire-hot blood across the porcelain surface; than stone floors underfoot, beating resilience and numbness into the calloused, tired soles of her feet. Just like raindrops on windowpanes, the flimsy blanket tumbles off her shoulders, exposes her arms to the unforgiving chill.

The embers in the fire are long dead, wan moonlight crawls weakly past the walls of rain, and, alone, Kamui shivers.

**Author's Note:**

> I spent half an hour trying to title this. ._. 
> 
> Comments, feedback, etc. always welcome! Also, petition to IS IT 2016 YET?!???


End file.
